BenQ HT3550 4K Home Theater Projector with HDR10 and HLG - 95% DCI-P3 and 100% Rec.709 - Dynamic Iris for Enhanced Darker Contrast Scenes - 3 Year Industry Leading Warranty

I have been an installer and enthusiast for over 20 years. My first install was a giant Barco RGB projector which put out a whopping 800 lumens. Projectors have come along way in every aspect. I chose this projector because I have a room that I can control all the lighting. I am able to make the room almost 100% black. This projector is absolutely stunning considering both the size and price point. It handles 4K material flawlessly. I must note that I installed the projector and used a fiber optic HDMI cable so I do not lose any signal along the path. I am shooting this onto a 100" fixed screen with a gain of 1.1, and it looks absolutely amazing. The lens shift is very helpful but note it is only vertical. There are multiple reviews out there with "preferred" settings to use to achieve maximum picture quality. So I will add mine. Lighting controlled room: Dynamic Iris: High Light Mode: Eco Picture: Cinema (If you set the 4K to Auto this will auto switch to H10 when 4K material is detected) Brilliant Color: On Wide Color Gamut: Off (I know I will get dinged for this, but my family enjoys a slightly brighter picture) Silence: Off We have viewed several movies from DVDs, to Streaming, to 4K Blu-Rays, and this projector will bring out the best in all of them. With that said, please keep in mind that a DVD at best is only 480p, which means it will look the worst on the projector, or any other 4K display. The only gaming I have done is on a regular PS4. I did not notice any lag, but I am not a competitive gamer. Finally, I must address lag from an audio perspective. The video is stunning and the visuals will blow you away when this is set up correctly and you are viewing good source material. There is inherent audio lag/delay when using a projection system depending how far away your projector is from your receiver. In my case, I purchased a 50' fiber optic HDMI cable so I could run it through the walls. Although fiber optic cables have more bandwidth to transport the entire unaltered signal, they are not any faster than a copper cable. Physics still apply here and the signal still has to travel the length of the cable. Not to mention the conversion to and from light at both ends. For my system, the magic number was 50ms of delay on the audio. This syncs up perfectly with the image. I would assume there is a calculation that can be found online for this, but I simply used a little logic and some trial and error. There is roughly 10ms delay for every 10' of cable. You may never notice it if you are running cable directly to a TV, but it's there. When your image is 100+ inches, it is hard to ignore. Finally, I have viewed an installed several projectors that where 10 - 20 times more expensive than this projector. This is the happiest I have been with a small format projector, and I do not feel as though I am losing any performance. I know there are bigger and better projectors out there, but I challenge you to find one for less than double the cost. As with all reviews, please take this with a grain of salt as this is just my experience. I would recommend this projector to anyone who asks.

This is my first time purchasing a projector, but I have experience with buying other high-res TVs and computer monitors in the past. I think for the price point ($1499.99 at the time of writing this review), this projector is well worth the money. For the past week, I have been testing out the capabilities of the projector on 4k movies and games (native and streamed). I thought that the colors on the unit out of the box were superb, similar to what you would find on an IPS computer monitor that has been properly calibrated. BenQ even includes a color calibration report in the box. The sound coming from the 2 5W speakers on the projector is respectable for what they are. They won't get very loud but the quality is definitely good enough for a small outdoor venue or room. I would recommend separate speakers to pair with this projector overall, though. In comparison to the ViewSonic PX-747 4K projector ($899 at the time of writing this), which I initially purchased along with this projector to see which I preferred, you will definitely benefit a lot from sticking with the BenQ. While the sharpness of the two projectors for 1080p and 4K content does not differ vastly, the contrast on the BenQ makes a world of difference. When watching darker scenes in Stranger Things and playing darker levels in Gears of War 4 on Xbox One S it was very hard to make out the finer details and certain objects in frame on the ViewSonic. I tried to adjust the brightness and contrast to fix this but colors ended up just looking too washed out. On the BenQ, however, I immediately noticed an improvement in contrast and HDR quality and had no issues with these darker scenarios. Moreover, the BenQ was much faster when powering on or switching inputs, which doesn't sound like a huge factor but definitely helps if you use it a lot. The $600 jump between projectors, if you have the money for it, is definitely worth it if you want to have a projector that you'll be happy with for long term. I will say that if you are expecting this projector to be "movie theater quality" then you may be slightly disappointed, however. The overall dynamic range is still not as good as a 4K TV at a similar price point, the projector is not bright enough for a well lit room, and the sharpness could be a little better. For something with improvements to those qualities, you'll have to upgrade even further to a better BenQ, Epson, Sony, etc projector that has native 4K. I think for most people you'd be better off spending that money on a good projector screen, projector ceiling mount, speakers, AV receiver, HDMI 2.0 HDCP 2.2 cables, 4K Bluray movies, etc to accompany this projector. You'll get rapidly diminishing returns upgrading to more expensive projectors, while this projector definitely hits the sweet spot in value (at it's very portable weighing only 9 lbs). I'd definitely recommend it!

(Jump to the bottom for suggested calibration settings) The BenQ HT3550 has proven to be a worthy upgrade over the 1080p version. Picture quality is great with one major exception, chromatic aberration. It’s the purple, blue, or green that outlines dark images next to bright images like text on a white background for example. It is quite severe on this model. If you sit far enough from the screen, greater than 1 1/2 times the width of your screen, then you won’t notice it. For those of you who sit closer you may be disappointed. Other minor issues with the image is a tendency toward red, you’ll notice this in very dark scenes, and the inability to get a rich vibrant green (tends more sour green than a punchy green) and yellow (more orange-gold than a sunny yellow). Most won’t notice and the calibration settings at the bottom help. Aside from that you will likely be happy with picture quality, HDR10 actually improves the image unlike other projectors (the Optoma 4K projectors are noticeably worse on HDR10 despite costing more). The fan noise is noticeable when sitting close. It’s 40 decibels at four feet so you’ll want to sit as far away as possible. During regular viewing it isn’t distracting, only when audio is low or a scene is quiet. Use silent mode if you find it distracting. This is a great projector for the money, you should give it a chance before considering the next step up which will cost $1,000 more for the less popular HT5550 and is likely only incrementally better. Calibration settings: These adjustments provided the best contrast with deepest blacks, and strong but natural colors and most importantly realistic skin tones. BenQ Adjusts the D-Cinema settings for color but they were surprisingly flat and the darkest blacks were crushed requiring Gamma to be changed to 1.8, and contrast dialed way down. Therefore, use HDR10 whenever available for best image and if your equipment (streaming device, receiver, etc., doesn’t support it then use the same settings below under Cinema mode. If you sit close to the projector then Silent mode is also acceptable. HDR10 / Cinema / Silent Brightness, Contrast, Color, Tint: 50 Sharpness: 5 HDR Brightness: +1 Color Temp: Warm Red, Green, Blue Gain: 100 Red Offset: 256 Green Offset: 261 Blue Offset: 260 Color Management Hue/Saturation/Gain: Red: 233/215/219 Green: 187/228/164 Blue: 217/201/180 Cyan: 229/171/210 Magenta: 146/177/248 Yellow: 212/232/216 Cinema Master: Color Enhancer & Flesh Tone: 0 Pixel Enhancer 4K: 2 Motion Enhancer 4K: Off Dynamic Iris: Low Brilliant Color: On Wide Color Gamut: Off Light Mode: Normal

Mounted at 11 feet from screen and it will only fill 80% of a 135" screen. Ceiling fan prevents mounting further back. I now have to move the ceiling fan to get it to the 13-14 foot sweet spot. Not BenQs fault. However a shorter throw projector could have handled the 11 foot distance IMO. I will try mounting it behind the fan first to see if it can work at 16-17 feet and still be bright enough. The pole mount places the projector below the fan enough to work. I can remove the light portion if needed. Initial picture quality is fantastic on HD, have not tried 4K yet. Color is great out of the box. Brightness better than expected with only 2200 lumens. With over head lights on screen was bright. With lights out it's amazing with very dark blacks. Moral of the story, read the specs carefully and figure out mounting option prior to ordering. Otherwise the projector is a winner out of the box. Will update review in a couple weeks once we have tried out 4K and 3D.

I love this projector, for the cost, what you get, it's great. But also with the price point, you get absolute trash customer support and warranty through benq. I have sent this projector to them multiple times for random things. Had a Fan die, when it came back, the color wheel was having issues, when it came back the next time, I noticed there was a screw and broken pieces of plastic rolling around inside the projector, they had also broken one of the main case supports. So, I sent it back again....the next time I got it back, all seemed ok....until today....my lamp is at 973 hours....the first one lasted me 5700....and now my lamp is flickering and dying....Humm. so, I opened it up because I have a spare lamp, and I find out that some idiot has replaced my lamp mounting screws with some kind of standard computer fan screws! They drilled out the holes on the lamp but didn't bother drilling out the mounting holes on the projector itself! So every single new lamp I get, I have to modify to make it work! It doesn't even mount up properly, i have no idea how they have got away with this kind of customer support for so long but wow. I am floored. Worst support i have ever experienced in my life. As of now, I have sent them another less than pleasing email expressing my disdain and asking for my original mounting screws back.

This is my first projector and after looking at all of the different options, I figured this was the one to go with. It's been said that this projector resolved lot of the first generation projector problems so not having to deal with some of those quirks is always a positive. In any case, this projector was MUCH better than I had expected. I'm just projecting on a wall and it looked so good that I'm debating to whether to even a buy screen for it or not! Eventually i'll get the screen but it's not by any means an urgent need for me. I honestly can't tell whether i'm watching a TV or projector. Of course the room does need to be dark (some light is still acceptable) but if you have good amount of ambient light then the picture will look washed out. Things i don't like: 1) Optical output is only outputting stereo sound. Not sure WTF BenQ was thinking here. I ended up buying a new receiver due to this. This was major let down for me and almost wanted to return this projector. But my old receiver was in need of update anyways so decided to fork the extra money for a new receiver. 2) Fan noise (when I had it on a table this was a bit loud but ever since mounting it on a wall, I've noticed that it's quieter than before). 3) Mounting - For some stupid reason, BenQ decided to not have a flat surface for the mount side so one of the screws is right next to the raised body. You can probably see it in the pics. In the end it still worked fine but for a company who's in this business for a while would have given some thought about this and made sure that the mounting side is completely flat. I used the Mount-It mount as it allowed for extension to drop the projector height. Things I LOVE: 1) Picture quality - Hands down just amazing out of the box and I've only just watched 1080p content so far! Planning to connect 4k firestick this weekend to get an idea of how great this projector really is. 2) Has USB power port (2.5A at that) so that I can just power the firestick off that port. Works perfectly! I really haven't played around with the different settings on the projector and frankly i'm afraid to just because it's puts out damn good image right now. Make sure to measure the distance from the lens to the wall and also the height of the projector. I think BenQ has a good calculator for this but again difficult to use. However, the best way is to just use a ladder and put the projector on it to see how the image would look. I just zoomed out the image completely and made sure that I was satisfied with the minimum image size it projected. After that I just found a good mounting spot for the projector mount between 1 to 2 feet after that spot so that I can then zoom in to get image size I wanted on the wall. I'd say go for it if you're debating to whether to get this as your first projector or not. I don't think I'd ever consider buying large TVs if a projector in that setting could also work.

I couldn’t wait for this baby to arrive from the Amazon Warehouse. It came a day early to my jubilee, and was nicely packaged in its original box. I was upgrading from my trusty old Viewsonic projector for outdoor movie night. There are a ton of reviews with specs and such, so I’ll just give you a layman’s version. The picture was simply astounding; both animation (Raya) and live movies. Granted, I’m coming from a 1080i, but the clarity of the image on my 4K JWSIT big screen (135’), blew me away. It exceeded my expectations. I drooled for the first three hours of viewing. The setup was easy, as well as slight adjustments to my viewing liking. The fan was never even noticeable. And the speakers were pleasantly adequate. My last projector sounded strained as I elevated the volume, but the ht3550 gave off an enjoyable, full sounding soundtrack. No sound glare as I increased the volume. I set this up with my son’s ps5 to take advantage of the 4K blu ray. Like watching movies outside for the first time. This is what I’ve been missing? I’d probably be crying if I wasn’t so elated by the upgrade. Gaming was just as amazing to watch. I noticed no lag, but we only played one person play. He did hop on fortnite with a couple of friends for an hour or so, but he had no issues that I could see. The ht3550 is truly a topnotch projector. I look forward to making it my own!

I’m coming from an Epson Home Cinema 3500. Had it for 4-5 years and ran into the “auto iris error” which seems to be somewhat common with some Epson models. I am looking to get it repaired, however I was hoping to take the opportunity to try out a different brand while I sent my Epson in for repair. After a lot of research and watching several video reviews, I settled on the Benq HT3550. This true 4K projector looked legit and everybody raved about it. I was very excited to give it a try. I’ve never experienced light leakage from a projector before but almost everybody talked about how it was an issue in the previous model, but Benq got it right with this one. I have to tell you, in my opinion this is a pretty big deal. Call me OCD if you want but to me there’s no reason for any projector to be putting out such a distracting light border. I included a picture but please know the image cannot capture the prevalence of the border. In person, it is extremely noticeable. I marked how far out the border goes with the yellow line in the picture. You can see it better without the image on the screen, but it looks like I simply need to keystone the image and zoom in to fit the screen, right? That’s why I included the image of the picture on the screen so that you could see the image fills the screen, keystone is great, but you still have the light leakage. To be fair, my wife says that it doesn’t bother her and when you are watching something on the screen, you don’t really notice the leakage as much. However, I do notice it and it really bothers me. Have a mentioned in the review yet that I’m a little bothered by this, ha! Sorry, I just can’t explain how people are overlooking this issue. The best explanation I have read is that all DLP projectors have a little light leakage and people sort of chalk it up to being something you deal with. Bottom line is it is a superb projector and image quality for the price...IF (and it’s a big IF) you are OK with a 6 to 8 inch light border around your screen. I’m not so it’s going back. It’s really unfortunate because I was really excited about the potential of this device.

Bought this as an upgrade for my W1070 which I have been using for quite some time. Setup couldn't be easier. I used the same support as I had for the W1070 and installed the projector at the exact same spot on the ceiling. It took less than 15 minutes to have it up and running and all setup done. I am very impressed by the image... it is a lot brighter and sharper than the W1070, even with non-4K sources. Also it is noticeably less noisy, especially in the Eco mode which I use. Extremely happy so far!

Franchement bien pour 1500$. J'avais besoin d'un bon petit projecteur qui pouvait afficher 100 pouces avec une distance d'environ 12 pieds. Je ne suis vraiment pas reçu. Seul commentaire, je n'aime pas particulièrement l'iris dynamique. C'est sensé améliorer le contraste des noirs en scène sombre et les blanc en scène éclairée, mais ça flash. C'est dérangeant. Mais ça se désactive. Image super naturel, peu de calibration à faire.

Initial perspective was that this was a great projector for the money. Color was bright and vibrant and picture was razer sharp. Easy to install and easy to align. ISSUES AT 8 HOURS: Within the first 8 lamp hours mid-movie a white vertical line appeared in the picture. Within a few more minutes all the picture/colors became distorted. Unplugged projector power and HDMI source and started up without a signal, the line was still there and the colors still distorted. Waiting on a replacement from Amazon.

The BenQ HT3550 is a solid upgrade into the world of 4k and for the price it is so much more than I expected. The image sharpness is great, the projector is plenty bright enough for a dedicated home theatre room and most of all the fan noise on Eco mode is much quieter than my old BenQ W1070. very happy with this purchase

Pros: + Lightweight, portable (needs a carry bag!). + Easy to setup. + Decent sound (not theatre quality but loud enough for a portable application) + Good user interface. Cons: - Not short-throw enough for my use. - Keystone correction is so-so but you get a large lit up region around the image which is distracting. - So-so image quality compared with an Optoma Cinemax P1, but this is about half the cost. So take your pick. For the money I was expecting more. For more money (Cinemax P1) you get a lot more — a true theatrical experience, IMO.